


Lighting the First Lamps

by anarchycox



Series: Anarchycox's 2019 Personal Writing Challenge [1]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Coping, Eggsy's point of view, Friendship, Harry Hart is presumed dead, M/M, Post-Kingsman: The Secret Service, Pre-Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Superstition, it is merlin and eggsy coping with Harry's death, no character death in the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 10:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchycox/pseuds/anarchycox
Summary: Merlin has a habit of typing a number at a certain time of day. Eggsy wonders why.





	Lighting the First Lamps

**Author's Note:**

> the first story in my personal challenge for 2019, it is a sad but hopeful story and I hope that you enjoy.

“Merlin?” Eggsy asked, putting down the book he was reading. When he had spare time, he found himself sitting in Merlin’s office. They didn’t talk a lot, Merlin wasn’t the sort for idle conversation, but there was a companionship that Eggsy appreciated. There hadn’t been many people in his life that he could be quiet with. He read old cases, novels, took a nap on the man’s couch. He felt safer in Merlin’s office than he had anywhere else in his life.

“Yes?” Merlin asked his fingers tapping quickly on the keypad.

“You type the same thing ever night, almost around the same time. It got earlier for a long time but has been getting later, but each night you type the same thing, there on the numbers.”

Merlin was quiet and Eggsy worried he asked the sort of question that was going to get him killed. “It turns on a light, right at dusk,” was all he said.

“Okay,” Eggsy said. It wasn’t dusk for them it was almost midnight. Neither of them slept though, and found themselves here a lot. More than they were during the day. Maybe they were slowly becoming vampires. “You have a desire to drink blood?”

“We are suffering a great deal of ptsd, we are not vampires,” Merlin replied.

“How’d you know that was my worry?”

“There is a limited list of things that drink blood, Eggsy. You were not asking about blood play, I do not believe -”

“-Ew fuck no for so many reasons,” Eggsy shuddered. “No offense.”

“Blood play is not on my list of kinks either,” Merlin smiled a bit.

“You do have a list of kinks?” Eggsy winced. “I do not want you to answer that.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Eggsy looked at the clock. “Where is it dusk, Merlin?”

“Not here,” was all he said and Eggsy knew not to push.

*****************************

Months later Eggsy needed less time in Merlin’s office, but he was still there a couple nights a week. Eggsy wondered if Merlin ever left the estate but he couldn’t figure out how to ask. He watched Merlin type in the code. Eggsy had the numbers memorized. “I looked it up,” Eggsy said. He looked at Merlin but Merlin didn’t return the gaze. “Right now it would be dusk on the eastern seaboard of the United States, yeah?”

“Are you a superstitious man, Eggsy?” Merlin asked. He stepped away from the computer and went to the sideboard and poured them both a dram.

“Everyone, even the people that swear they aren’t, has something,” Eggsy shrugged, “Always toss spilled salt over my shoulder, picked it up from my Gran.”

“I have a few quirks, a lot borne out of missions going almost wrong but not. Saved Bors’s life on a day I experimented with a different tie knot, any mission for him and I tie the knot the same way now. Before going into the lab, I touch the top left door jam, for a reason I couldn’t quite explain. And when Harry is out on a mission, I always turn on a light in the nearest safe house.”

Eggsy didn’t spit out the alcohol, Kingsman had taught him to not react like how he would have before, but he put his glass and then Merlin’s down carefully. He wondered if he should be calling medical. “Merlin...Rory, Harry has been gone almost a year now.”

Merlin nodded, “I know, lad. But still I light a window.”

“Are you okay?” Eggsy asked. He realized he should have asked that long ago.

“No,” Merlin picked his glass back up and drank. “But I don’t have to be.”

*****************************

Another three months and Merlin still was typing in the code. Eggsy had asked him to stop once, and had to leave the room to cry when Merlin just shook his head and said that the day he stopped typing it in, he would walk out the door and never come back.

“Why?” Eggsy asked. “Why this?”

“It was, ‘93...no ‘91,” Merlin said. “He went missing. A mission went completely wrong, and his glasses broke and the back up comms too. The last I saw he was surrounded by three men, and another had him in a choke hold. There were no cameras for me to hack into, a difficult process at the time, and I tried everything I could but there was just no way to find him. King was ready to declare him MIA and scrub the safe house. I refused to change the files.” 

Eggsy couldn’t begin to process all the emotions that were crossing Merlin’s face. “You don’t give up on us, when you think there is a chance.” His back had been to the wall, and Merlin stayed calm and got him out.

“A spring storm hit, a nasty one, the sort that makes the sky black and floods streets and everyone insisted even if he got out, he’d never make the safe house. A lit a light in the house, remote start on it. Sort of a distance version of the clapper at the time. I diverted power from the whole block to keep that light lit.”

“And Harry found it,” Eggsy said, because of course he did, because that was what Harry would do.

“And Harry found it,” Merlin agreed. “He was a mess and was off for six months due to injury but without that light, he would not have found his way home.”

“And it started a thing for you, like Bors and the tie.” Eggsy looked at him. “But Merlin it is different now.”

“Why?” Merlin countered, “I lit a light in the closest safe house to him for every mission he ever took, after that one. I don’t see why I should stop now.”

“It is different,” Eggsy went over to Merlin and hugged him. “We saw, we both saw. And as much as I wish our friend hadn’t had that happen to him, it did.”

“Eggsy I have lit a light for my husband at dusk for decades now, and I will not stop the habit just because he is dead.”

“Merlin,” Eggsy had no idea what to say; he hadn’t known and his heart ached anew. “Merlin.” He tightened his hug and for a moment Merlin leaned into it, but then pushed him away and Eggsy let go. “You need to talk to someone.”

“I just did to you.”

*******************************

Another month and he was there and Merlin still typed in the code. “I don’t understand,” Eggsy said. “You hurt yourself every time you key that in.”

“I can stand the pain, and he needs to know I am lighting the way home.”

“Merlin, that's the thing, he doesn’t.” Eggsy worried that that sounded too harsh.

“Eggsy he’ll come home to me one way or another, of that I am sure, and he will know I Iit the light every night until my dying day. And it will guide him back to me, as it had always done.”

“How can you be so sure?” Eggsy wanted that kind of faith in something, anything. Even if it was something as small and as huge as turning on a light.

“Because,” Merlin answered.

“Because why?”

“Because he’s Harry,” Merlin said, like that was enough, and it was.

*******************************

Merlin landed himself in medical a few weeks later, pneumonia and was knocked out and cursed the doctors that he had to do the thing before he fell to the sedatives, and they didn’t understand but Eggsy did. He went to Merlin’s computer and put in his password and went through the system and found the right thing. He keyed in the numbers for Merlin, lit the light at dusk.

He didn’t believe Harry would ever see the light, but Merlin did and for Eggsy that was enough. He didn’t believe in much, but yeah, he believed in Merlin. He did it for Merlin for the next two nights until medical released him, and he watched Merlin the next night type it in and instantly look better. “I had you,” Eggsy promised.

“Thank you, lad,” Merlin smiled a sincere thanks.

Eggsy shrugged. “Hope is a hard thing to carry with this job.”

“It can be.”

“I hope...well I hope he sees your light.”

Merlin didn't say anything, they just read together in silence.

Eggsy said nothing the next night when he watched Merlin code in the number.


End file.
